Ernest Hemingway, greatest of war novelists, is dead. And dead at a very bad time—right when we need him around to describe the romance, danger, confusion, and excitement of this Moral Equivalent of War that our President has declared. Ah, well— weaker voices must suffice!
In the late winter of that year it was very cold (cero absoluto) and we were quartered in the barracks of the Insulation Works near Poughkeepsie and made sorties into the surrounding areas to insulate the great villas and split-levels along the river, with Rinaldo, my driver, handling the great truck (automóvil monstruoso) and me handling the heavy insulation gun with great dignity and much technical confusion; and in the day it was very fine and clear and cold, but in the night just cold—in fact, freezing (congealo el rumpo), because the unspeakable gas company had shut off the unspellable heat in the unpronounceable barracks.
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